Department of Cell Biology Faculty

Cell Lineage and Differentiation of Insulin-Producing Cells During Embryonic Development and Pancreatic Islet Regeneration

Blood glucose levels are regulated by insulin, the hormone synthesized by the B cells of the pancreas. Insulin producing cells are the most abundant cell types of the islets of Langerhans; the islets also contain smaller number of cells that produce other hormones. Because of the pivotal role of insulin in carbohydrate metabolism, destruction of the B cells leads to hyperglycemia and overt diabetes. Daily injections of insulin are required to circumvent the deleterious effects of the disease. To avoid daily exogenous insulin administration, it would be desirable to develop a source of insulin cells that can be used for transplantation. Mature B cells could be transplanted. This approach, however, has several disadvantages because mature S cells do not proliferate, are scarce and do not have a protracted life span. Our main objective is to develop a source of B cells that could be induced to proliferate and differentiate in vitro, thus proving a reliable source of transplantable insulin producing cells.

Our work, therefore, seeks to identify and isolate B precursor cells and characterize the signals that induce their proliferation and differentiation into mature, insulin producing cells.

Martinez, A., Cuttita, F. and Teitelman, G. (1998) Expression pattern for adrenomedullin during pancreatic development in the rat reveals a common precursor with other endocrine cell types. Cell and Tissue Research 293:95100.